Committed to Sites: Behind Merck's Eagle Award Win

Adam Kinsey, Associate VP of Clinical Operations at Merck, shares the site-focused initiatives that earned Merck the Eagle Award for three years in a row. Discover how Merck stands out through transparency, site support, and initiatives like streamlined site payments and protocol simplification. Tune in for insights on how industry partners can adopt similar strategies to improve site partnerships and clinical trial success.

Transcript

Jimmy Bechtel: 0:00

Welcome to SCRS Talks provided by the Society for Clinical Research Sites. Thank you for joining us as we explore the latest insights, trends, and innovations shaping clinical research today. I'm Jimmy Bechtel, the Vice President of Site Engagement with the Society, and today, I'm joined by Adam Kinsey, the Associate Vice President of Clinical Operations and the Regional Head of North America for Clinical Research with Merck here to share about their recent recipiency of the Eagle Award. Adam, it's great to have you with us. Really excited to talk through this prestigious award and maybe some of the insights into how Merck may have been this year's recipient. But before we jump into that, we'd love to hear a little bit more about you. So if you wouldn't mind an introduction.

Adam Kinsey: 0:45

Well, first, Jimmy, thank you so much for having me. It's certainly an honor to have received the EGLE award for three years in a row and four out of the last nine. As far as my background goes, I've been in clinical research about 28 years. I started My career in a very site facing role, and I've been throughout my career in roles that were touching sites. So CRA roles, country operations roles, which is what I'm in currently. I've been at Merck for the last 10 years. It's been a wonderful experience, and I'm certainly happy to be talking about the things that we're doing to be very site centric and site friendly.

Jimmy Bechtel: 1:26

That's great, Adam. I'm excited to get into it as well. And as you mentioned, Merck is the recipient of the Eagle Award for two years in a row, which is really impressive. There's very few companies that can say that they've won it more than once, let alone consecutively. So what do you believe really sets Merck apart in terms of your commitment to the sites?

Adam Kinsey: 1:47

Yeah, well, it's actually three years in a row, Jimmy, oh, excellent.

Jimmy Bechtel: 1:49

Yes. Yes. Congratulations.

Adam Kinsey: 1:51

but so I, I think there's a number of things. I mean, you think about the criteria that the Eagle award is based on, it's a number of things around, how do we pay sites? How do we communicate with sites? How much do we assist them and advocate for the Pain points that they have. Our workforce that is site facing is very committed and working in our systems and processes. So, it's across A number of areas where we really focus on the needs of sites because we realized that without sites, our operations would grind to a halt. And so we accomplished that in a number of ways. We survey sites formally, but also informally, we try to involve sites in the different systems and processes that we put in place that will be relevant to sites. So it's across a wide array of things where we try to listen to sites and then act on the feedback that they've given us to make the critical and important work that they're doing as easy or as painless as possible because we know that, they're the front lines and the ones that are our connection to patients and the participants that volunteer for our trials.

Jimmy Bechtel: 3:04

That's great, Adam. And it's awesome to hear. We talk about all the time. Oh, communication, communication, transparency. And it sounds like that's part of the core of what Merck does. And part of the reason why, you've been able to make and develop such deeper relationships with sites. I'll also say that I know that one of the first things you mentioned around payment terms is something that I know sites value tremendously when their relationship with Merck. Merck does payment terms and we'll just blanket that term there for a variety of different things very well. So I applaud you for your commitment to the sites, having listened to them and adjusted your operational practices to align with what the needs of the sites are.

Adam Kinsey: 3:49

That's right. I mean, we need a healthy site ecosystem to have a healthy clinical research industry ecosystem, which ultimately means that we can bring medicines to address unmet medical need medicines and vaccines. And, it's really critical that we support the healthiness of our sites and, the budgets and payments is one way that we do that. But you've also mentioned communication and, you know, sites need timely responses. They need people that are available and will pick up the phone or answer that email when a communication is sent because trials are getting more complex because therapy areas are getting more complex as we have more personalized types of treatments and medicines so you're dealing with a more complex environment. So the more that we can be on the other end of that phone when sites need help and need assistance, that's really critical to us and to them.

Jimmy Bechtel: 4:44

I couldn't agree more, Adam, and I want to talk also about the why. Why is listening to those research sites important to Merck? And how then do you go about incorporating that feedback into your strategies? Because we hear that Part of the problem is the listening isn't necessarily the hard part and the agreeance. I'm sure everyone agrees with some of the insights that the sites share, but it's then taking that back and making those changes institutionally that becomes part of the problem.

Adam Kinsey: 5:12

I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we have, right? Because Merck's a big company as are, the industry, you've got many different players of different sizes on the sponsor side, biotech, you've got big pharma, small pharma, etc. And, everyone wants to standardize their operations to create efficiency to create quality and something that you can build upon. But the problem for sites, which I get this feedback all the time, is if each company that they're dealing with wants to standardize in their own way, then that causes the sites to have a lack of standardization and that is hard for them to deal with both financially, but also in relation to, their operations and staff retention and things like that. So, it's definitely a battle of, whose standardization wins out. But I just think we always try to examine that and see where we can have flexibility and it's not easy. But we take the feedback and we really do a lot of self reflection and then we will, Institute initiatives internally to try to address that feedback. So, for instance, we've over the years. heard from sites that the way we manage and issue queries is suboptimal. it took us some time and some self reflection to accept that feedback. But we've learned a lot. We've definitely taken that to heart in recent times, and we've launched an initiative called the query management simplification project where we're looking to reduce our queries by 30 plus percent over time. So it's really something that we understand is a pain point and something that needs to be addressed. And then we work to to do that.

Jimmy Bechtel: 6:51

That's really cool, Adam. I think it's refreshing again to hear that it's taken feedback, listening, and then implementation at it. It sounds like at a large scale at an initiative level, the importance there, I think I want to under emphasize is that it's not just going to be one person involved in these processes. And I think it's really important that sites understand that as well. You know, they kind of tell the person that they're interacting with, right? I'm sure you've heard, you get a lot of feedback at summits, you and the Merck team, it's this handful of people hear those things, but sites need to understand that when you bring that feedback back to the organization, it's not going to happen fast. Nothing in research seems to happen very fast, but it involves so many different people. So I applaud you again and taking steps to institutionalize these changes to make sure that they're valuable, that they meet the needs of the sites and the patients, as you've stated so many times already today, and that it's going to stick. It's going to be something that we're able to implement and make change for long term.

Adam Kinsey: 7:52

Yeah, Jimmy, let me add, touching on what I said earlier, there are instances I to be candid where we get feedback, and it's more difficult for us to implement the change that's being requested. And in those instances, I think it's just equally, if not more important that you communicate back to sites why we aren't able to change in the way that sites are requesting, and maybe, reassure them that while we can't do that now, we certainly will have that in the parking lot and something that we will examine in an ongoing fashion to see if we can change. You know, you touched on that earlier. Listening is sometimes the easy part, although I would say You need to make sure that you provide sites with plenty of opportunity to provide feedback rather than it being, something where sites feel like they don't have a voice and don't have a way to give that feedback so that it is important that you provide multiple avenues. But as you said earlier, the listening in some ways is the easy part. It's the return communication either that you are acting and telling them what you're doing, or if you can't equally important to say why and maybe what the plan is for the future to to examine it again.

Jimmy Bechtel: 9:02

Exactly. It's that again that that transparent communication that I think is so important. But Adam, you mentioned the the query issuance it initiative that you're ready to embark upon, but I imagine there's others. So can you share maybe a little bit more about what other initiatives or programs that Merck has implemented or might be implementing to support sites in addressing some of their needs?

Adam Kinsey: 9:27

Absolutely. We touched earlier on the budget and payment part. So we have a really important initiative that we call budget to payment. it's modernizing the way that we generate our template budgets that we send out to sites, but really, the most important part of the initiative is streamlining the internal connections we have with our electronic data capture system and our payment system so that sites can get paid even, More quickly and accurately, right? And there's a transparency across the world with, what we're paying, what we're paying for and when. And, I think sites will, see Merck continue to be a sponsor company That pays quickly and accurately for the work that the sites are doing. So I think that's an important initiative for us. But on the more operational side, we also have initiative that's called lean protocol design. So we understand that every little complexity or extra thing that's added to protocols. really hurts sites the most, right? Because they have to absorb that complexity and those sort of extra things. And it's really an aggregate pain that they experience. not only them, but of course the patients and participants that they're trying to reach and recruit to the studies. So we have this initiative where we're working with some partner companies to assess our protocol designs. And generate somewhat of a burden score, and it allows you to make different scenarios on if I make decision X versus decision Y, you know, what's that going to mean to the design of the study? But importantly, what's that going to mean from a burden standpoint to sites to vendors to patients as well? So that's a really critical initiative. We also have an initiative to try to help sites modernize the way they handle their site regulatory documents. So we've partnered with another company to offer an electronic investigator site file binder solution that they can use for Merck trials. So we feel like that kind of modernization assistance is really important. We also have assistance that we provide sites in the form of site augmentation services. So let's say a site, has a pretty well staffed set of study coordinators, but for whatever reason, they lose half of them You know, somebody leaves and recruits people over and suddenly the site loses a significant portion of their workforce, and that can be really hard for sites to overcome because the work is still piling up, right? The data is still piling up. Patient visits are still occurring. So we offer, A way that we can provide contract coordinator and other services to sites to get them through those tough times. So that's another example of the way that we have an initiative that's been around for a while in the way that we try to support sites.

Jimmy Bechtel: 12:08

Adam, It's great to hear that it's not singular focus. It's not just one thing that you're doing, which I think sites sometimes perceive that is the challenge is all we're only doing one thing, but it's multiple things. It's multiple iterations. It's. tackling these different areas of concern. And what I also like is that there are areas of major concern. It sounds like you're doing the right things to try to address some of these challenges at the site level. They're the high impact items, which is probably exactly why you continue to be recipients of the Eagle award is because you're listening. You're tackling the issues that are actually important to the sites and you're working to solve some of them. So thank you. I hope that the sites hear this and understand things are happening. Things are moving at least at Merck to try to solve some of these things. And I hope that some of our sponsor and CRO partners that are listening, identify that even a major pharmaceutical company like Merck, Can make change for the better for the sites and take some of that back to their organizations as well. So lots of lessons

Adam Kinsey: 13:12

for

Jimmy Bechtel: 13:12

our audience to learn from.

Adam Kinsey: 13:14

Yeah, you know, I mentioned the query thing. One other thing I wanted to add Jimmy as you were talking, you know, one of the areas that comes up a lot with sites is training. And I know that's an important initiative that SCRs. has as well to try to see if we can, get site training meeting more streamlined. I don't want to use the term reduce it necessarily. I think it would lead to reduction, but just have a better way that we issue training to sites to that is more risk based and just in time, so to speak, so that The people that are conducting the protocols, have the information and skills that they need when they need them. Right? So I think it's something we're examining now. We don't have an initiative per se to specifically buckle down on this. But this is another thing. We're sort of in the process of listening and absorbing and seeing what we can do related to that.

Jimmy Bechtel: 14:03

It's excellent. You know, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned, but Adam, I want to begin to close us out here with a final question. And I always like to end us on a way to to look ahead to close us out on on a future vision here in a future site. So again, what efforts looking ahead or priorities rather. Does Merck have plans to continue to strengthen those partnerships with sites? I think we've talked and you've alluded to a lot of really great programs that you're doing or that in the works but if there's anything else that you can share as far as a priority for Merck moving forward, that'd be great.

Adam Kinsey: 14:37

Yeah, Jimmy. Thanks. I think it's more of the same what I've been talking about. one of the pain points that sites communicate a lot is around the different technologies that are emerging, right? It's a rapidly changing space related to that. And I think, you know, I hear feedback a lot from sites that while the technologies in one view are helpful in another view, it can be kind of overwhelming by the number of different technologies that are being issued by different sponsors and covering the same topics. And so I think we do have some initiatives underway from a Merck perspective to try to streamline our technologies so that we have things like single sign on and other ways that we can aggregate the different systems that that site staff might be needing to engage with for our trials so that they don't have to have dozens of passwords and things like that to keep track of. So, those are some of the future looking things that you'll see coming out from Merck. We have our zero gravity project where we're transforming the systems that we're working in across several key areas like our TMF, our EDC, and our clinical trial management system. And, we're working with our partner vendors that do things like IRT and other things to modernize into a single sign on space. So those are some of the things that we're doing now and into the future to try to address the needs of sites.

Jimmy Bechtel: 16:00

That's great, Adam. Onwards and upwards is what I heard with that. So not slowing down. Seems like there's another set of really great initiatives and valuable programs for the site. So thank you. And a big thank you to Merck. And another big congratulations to Merck for their dedication to the sites and of course, to the patients. It shows in the work that you're doing and all of the great initiatives that you have going on not only active, but in the pipeline as well. And thank you, Adam, for your time today. And thank you for sharing some of those insights with us. It's been great to talk with you and really valuable.

Adam Kinsey: 16:32

likewise. And let me just touch back on the Eagle awards. And we certainly view those as signposts along the path and not arrival points. So, we, are committed to not resting on our laurels. We will continue to do the things that I've mentioned, which is, listening and acting and being very site centric and patient centric. So we're honored and privileged to have the awards, but we'll put those on the shelf and consider ourselves to be in line for winning it again, but that will require us to continue with the things that I've described and being site centric.

Jimmy Bechtel: 17:08

It sure will, Adam. Well, thanks again and a big thank you and congratulations to Merck. And I also would like to add for everyone listening to make sure that they don't forget to explore other site focused resources made available on our website, myscrs. org. You'll find a wealth of knowledge and content and details for upcoming engagement and connection opportunities like our Site Solutions Summits where we award the Eagle Award with our various partners like Merck and many others. Thanks again for listening and tuning in and until next time.